The Jordan Harbinger Show - 870: Personality Tests | Skeptical Sunday

Episode Date: July 30, 2023

Are personality tests valuable tools based on science, or just horoscopes in a lab coat? Comedian Michael Regilio joins us for Skeptical Sunday to find out! On This Week's Skeptical Sunday, We Discuss: Personality tests, like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, are widely used by individuals and organizations as a way to understand who we are and how we interact with one another. But how accurate are they? The Myers-Briggs test was developed by Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers — neither of whom were scientists or psychologists. Companies use personality tests in hiring practices, potentially leading to discrimination and exclusion of qualified candidates. The Big 5 (5-Factor Model) is a more accurate alternative, but even it assumes personality traits remain relatively static over time. Psychologists and researchers should continue studying personality and behavior to develop more accurate and fair assessment tools that can better predict job performance and workplace success, but we should take the results of current personality tests with a grain of salt. Connect with Jordan on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. If you have something you'd like us to tackle here on Skeptical Sunday, drop Jordan a line at [e-mail] and let him know! Connect with Michael Regilio at his website, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube, and make sure to check out the Michael Regilio Plagues Well With Others podcast here or wherever you enjoy listening to fine podcasts! Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/870 This Episode Is Brought To You By Our Fine Sponsors: jordanharbinger.com/deals Sign up for Six-Minute Networking — our free networking and relationship development mini course — at jordanharbinger.com/course! Like this show? Please leave us a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This episode is sponsored in part by Conspiruality Podcast. You know how I'm always talking about critical thinking and spotting manipulation? Well, there's a podcast that's all about dismantling new age cults, wellness grifters, and conspiracy mad yogis, basically the wild overlap of spirituality and misinformation. It's called the Conspiruality Podcast. The hosts, a journalist, cult researcher, and a philosophical skeptic, dive deep into how this stuff spreads, from Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation's dystopian vision of the future to how former leftists get pulled into far-right conspiracies.

An interesting episode to check out is called Speaking Truth to Goop, where Jen Gunter breaks down the pseudoscience behind the wellness industry in a way that is super entertaining and eye-opening. It's sharp, funny, and makes you a lot harder to fool, which, if you listen to this show, you know I'm all about that. From exploring cults to analyzing our cultural and political landscape, the Conspiratuality Podcast will help you stay informed against misinformation and resist fear tactics.

Find Conspirality on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Skeptical Sunday. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. Today, I'm here with Skeptical Sunday co-host Michael Regulio. Normally on the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories,

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Don't forget, we have our fundraiser to lift that village in Kenya out of extreme poverty with a cash donation. There is a donor that's going to double our donation. So we're trying to raise 20 grand. It'll become 40 grand, bringing hope to families that struggle to afford, really even the most basic necessities of life for themselves and their kids. This is the village of Nomani in rural Kenya. We want to give $1,000 to each of the 36 families. It's about 200 people in total.

In this village, only seven families have a permanent shelter. Education, $3 a semester, but over half the residents have no formal education because they can't afford $3 per semester to send their kids to school. No medical care because they have no way to get there. Access to water is erratic at best. The pipes run dry for up to a week at a time. People can't afford to buy water. So what they're going to do with the money is buy land for farming, cover school fees for their kids,

buy things like goats that can endure harsh droughts, improve their homes with sturdy construction slash build homes for them to sleep in, metal roofs, concrete floors so they're not in the dirt. And most importantly, in my opinion, they are going to start small businesses like community taxi services. They've got to get motorcycles and stuff like that. There's other ideas here. They're going to be self-sustaining. They're not just going to blow through this money.

They're going to use it to lift the village out of poverty. and they're going to chronicle this for us, which is going to be really interesting for us to watch. Go to give directly.com slash Jordan to donate. I, of course, am donating. Donations are 100% tax deductible in the U.S. If you're not in the U.S., here's your chance to support the show. GiveDirectly.com slash Jordan.

And if you email me a screenshot of your donation, I would love to send you a personalized video thanking you for it. GiveDirectly.com slash Jordan. By the way, if you use the Stitcher app to listen to this show, they are getting rid of that app, August 29. it will no longer be useful. So switch to a different app if you use the Stitcher app to listen to this podcast. If you're on Android, I suggest podcast addict. It might not be as pretty, but it works really well. If you're on iOS, Apple, you should use Overcast, in my humble opinion, or Apple podcasts,

but definitely no longer Stitcher. It will not update anymore in the next couple of months. So if you're using the Stitcher app, now is a good time to switch to a new podcast app. And if you have any problems with this. You're kind of boomer in terms of your tech. You don't know what to do. You can always email me, Jordan at Jordan Harbinger.com. I will try to point you in the right direction, but the Stitcher app will no longer work for this show. All right. Today, personality tests. Now, these things are everywhere. Some of them are completely innocuous, like those Cosmo tests from back of the day. Are you a Samantha or are you a Miranda? Are you a Kramer? Are you a George? People post their results on social media for fun, for laughs, for likes. But there are other

personality tests with real life consequences, unfortunately. Dating sites use them to help you determine which way to swipe. Employers employ personality tests to find out who gets the job and who is just out of luck. So is it a resume keeping people from a paycheck or is it a weird, not very accurate algorithm that assigns an unemployable personality type, whatever that means? With literal lives and livelihoods on the line, it's worth asking, what are personality tests? Who came up with are they really a valuable tool, or are they basically just horoscopes in a frickin' lab coat? This week, comedian Michael Regilio, is going to be a real Jerry, I guess, and answer the burning question. What's the deal with personality tests?

Thanks, Jordan. Despite your intro, I'm just myself, Deney. Do you know who you are? I'm a terrible Jerry Seinfeld impersonator. That was not something I'm ever going to do again. Should I take maybe a test to find out who I really am? Oh, that depends on how much you value your time. Personality tests are fun when there's absolutely nothing riding on the results.

Plus, we like to talk and think about ourselves, which is the whole point of the results. But as complex beings, I don't know if a few questions will exactly define Jordan Harbinger. I tend to agree. Can we learn something about ourselves based on the results, though? Not really. They put individuals into a box and say, if you fall into this box, you're good at this and bad at that. When dating apps use them, they're saying, hey, look at all the people in your box.

You should make out with them. Yeah, the teenage me would have absolutely loved that advice and would have also been woefully unsuccessful at taking it. Thousands of personality-type-based groups exist on websites like Meetup.com, Tinder, and SoSync. They match people based on personality test results. People are using their personality test results to define themselves and who they are compatible with,

similar to how some people use Zodiac signs. Ah, yes. and China, I think it's blood type as well. I think it's both a diet and a horoscope. It's very scientific, as you may guess. How long have we been using personality tests? A recent, where do they come from? Personality testing boomed during World War I.

Both the U.S. and British militaries were looking for ways to screen for soldiers who had, quote, weak constitutions. That sounds very technical. Yeah, I know. And might be more susceptible to what they then called shell shock. Nowadays, we call PTSD. So an American psychologist, Robert Woodworth, created a test called the Woodworth Personal Data Sheet. This early personality test had interesting questions like, can you sit still without fidgeting?

And did you ever think you had lost your manhood? I definitely can't sit still without fidgeting, and I always check for the manhood thing in the shower every morning. Won't ask questions. Okay, just in the morning, lucky you. By the time they published the Woodworth test in 1919, the war was over. but academia embraced the test, and psychologists used it for all kinds of research.

It became the roadmap for all subsequent personality testing, and this ultimately led to the big dog on the personality test block, the Myers-Briggs type indicator. Oh, yeah. I'm sure most people are generally familiar with the Myers-Briggs test. I remember taking it as a kid and as an adult and seeing, you still hear about it everywhere. That's the one where you end up saying things like,

Oh, m. She's such an I-N-T-J for like the next 18 months of your life in annoying the crap out of all your friends and colleagues. I'm guessing two people named Myers and Briggs came up with this. Sort of. The Myers-Briggs type indicator, or the MBTI, is based on the ideas of personality types developed in 1921 by famed psychologist Carl Jung. Ooh, Carl Jung.

A few of his devotees have cornered me at parties back in college. not a whole lot of fun in that case. What was Carl Jung all about? Well, by the way, just for the record, Fun Young's might be a brilliant idea for snack food for grad students. Yeah, we'll talk about licensing that. Listening to someone wax on about Carl Jung

is like Audible NyQuil, but we have to mention him. Yes, Audible Nightquil, probably better than Audible Ambien. Roseanne Barr told me that Ambien makes you racist. So at least it's merely boredom that results from this one. Wow, indeed.

Well, he did ask interesting questions, about the human unconscious and its effects on behavior. And in a small offshoot of his thinking, Carl Young hypothesized that there were eight identifiable personality types. The thing is, back in 1921, Young did not consider the scientific method. So this was just like his opinion, man. His writings are...

I was hoping there would be a Lubowski reference in there at some point. And you got it, dude. His writings are honest and admit some of the personality types were just based on his observations of his wife. Carl Young complained his wife feels emotions all the time, so her type is a feeler. Oh, man. And that was good enough for science in 1921. Most notable, though, Carl Young was the first to articulate the notions of introverted and extroverted.

That's really funny. He's like, my wife and her pesky emotions. She's a feeler. She's one of those people that feels things. That is interesting, though. These are personality traits we still identify with today. Maybe not feeler, but introverted and extroverted, at least. I mean, I feel like I use that word every day.

But right off the bat, there's a problem. Introverted and extroverted are not hard and fast traits that define a person for life. Who didn't watch a friend or even themselves come out of their shell after high school or when they met the right significant other? Personality is not static. And my unscientific observation of myself is that depending on the situation, I can be one or the other. That's a good point. I'm definitely the same way.

I certainly came out of my shell. People are actually shocked when they hear that I said probably three words. per week at school and only when called on throughout all of middle school and a lot of high school, it just especially given my job now. It's not a static trait. I'll give you that. Yeah. Young, however, did not create a test for these personality types. That came later with Myers and Briggs, who used Young's writings and bought into the notion that personality traits are mostly static. So from the get-go, the Myers-Briggs test might as well be built on a foundation of sand, which gets us to the test's creators, Myers and Briggs.

So who are these guys? Gals, Jordan, gals. Unfortunately, this test isn't a significant scientific accomplishment, some believe it to be. Okay, so who were these women? Catherine Cook Briggs was born in 1875. She was a teacher and a writer of both fiction and essays. In writing fiction, she was interested in understanding the personality of distinct characters. Her daughter, Isabel Briggs-Myers, was pretty much.

much treated like Catherine's subject in an experiment in human behavior since birth. Her mother was obsessed with obedience and developed some questionable theories on the subject like, never warn a child a punishment is coming. Okay, I'm not a parenting expert, but that's objectively terrible and not a very impressive edict. Right. Isabel grew up to be a writer like her mother. She wrote mystery novels in the early 1920s. Mom Briggs read some Carl Jung and was really into his concept of eight personality trades, and she shared it with her daughter. So I just want to be clear here, neither of these women were scientists or psychologists. Is that correct? No. Between the two of them, they had zero, yes, it's correct. No, between the two of them, they had zero formal scientific

experience. They just liked Young's writings. In their defense, psychology was a boys' club at that time, and it would have been next to impossible for women to take that career path. But it didn't stop Isabel and Catherine from revamping and expanding Young's ideas. Literally, they took Young's eight personality traits and stretched them out to the much more scientifically sound 16 personality traits. Oh, okay. So I guess they believed bigger numbers are more sciencey? And aren't they? Indeed. They developed what they called a type indicator. They categorized people using questions based on Young's interpretation of the four core psychological functions. After answering a few Questions, they assigned a four-digit barcode with each letter corresponding to your type.

This led to their theory of 16 distinct personality types. So the MBTI, which is used by employers and I believe federal agencies and stuff like that, is based on the opinion and bias of this mother-daughter, not scientific at all, sort of unqualified duo. And that's shocking, actually. Yeah, and Carl Young would agree with you. himself said every individual is an exception to the rule. This kind of classification is nothing but a childish parlor game. So if the guy who came up with the theory and mostly was not

scientific about it disagrees you about your theory of his theory, I feel like you might be barking up the wrong tree. Or you're just, you know, taking things to the next level, but possibly also just part of the bullshit industrial complex that is personality tests. That's right. The Myers-Brigg type indicator is a weird piece of pop psychology. And you, are onto something when you say it's based on their biases. Isabel, the daughter, wrote mystery novels that are riddled with racism, sexism, all the isms. Okay, so whenever somebody's like a century ago and it's like, this is racist, is it a sign of the times back then? I never really know what to think. Nor do I, but look, I haven't read it,

and apparently it's difficult to come by, but her second novel seems to be what we would call today a racist piece of trash. The story follows an affluent white family who all start committing suicide when they learned that one of their ancestors was black. Wow. Okay. Right. So it's not just casually racist because of little things in the context. It's like the whole plot itself is racist and is about racist people being racist. They're so racist, they basically die because of it. All right. I think I get it. Yeah. A certain coincidence strikes me. Isabel Briggs-Myers was a mystery novelist who developed a theory of psychology and indeed a personality test based on little more than what she pulled

out of her ass, a theory that has gone on to become a multi-billion dollar industry and has millions of devotees. So I have to ask, does this ring any pseudoscientific bells? Does it remind you of anything or anyone? Yeah, it does. It reminds me, especially the novelist part, of El Ron Hubbard being a sci-fi writer and then being like, I should invent a religion and then inventing Scientology. Okay, so I'm not crazy. Not in this particular instance. Anyway. In fact, I guess you could say that old mother Briggs was actually Old Mother Hubbard, you know, because she was like El Ron. We get it.

Yeah, we get it. All right. Coincidence aside, as we'll see, there's actually a fair comparison here. In 1944, Myers and Briggs published the Myers-Briggs type indicator handbook, and the seeds of a movement were born. Just by listening to this show, I can tell a lot about somebody's personality. For example, I know that you would enjoy the fine personality. products and services that support this show. We'll be right back back. Thank you for listening and supporting the show. All the deals, discount codes, and ways to support us are over at Jordan Harbinger.com

slash deals. You can also search for any sponsor using the search box on the website as well, so please consider supporting those who support us. Now, back to Skeptical Sunday. Okay, it's quite baffling, especially when one takes into account just how big the Myers-Briggs test has become. If this was niche little stuff that people were bringing back, that hadn't been seen for 50 years, I'd be like, okay, internet. But this is an institution. So let's talk about what this test is and how it manages to classify people or pretends to classify people. Okay, the Myers-Briggs type indicator assigns you a four-letter label. Each letter represents how you scored in different categories. The categories are as follows. E for extroversion,

I for introversion, S for sensing, and N for intuition. Hmm. N for intuition is not very intuitive. You are catching on, my friend. So, all right, I know what extroversion and introversion are kind of, I mean, we all kind of do, right? Not in the scientific sense, but in the sense where when someone says it, I know what it means. What the hell is sensing and intuition? That sounds almost the same. Right. They are made up categories by people without the credentials to be creating scientific categories. So the skeptic in me is tempted to say, who cares? But since a giant chunk of the podcast,

population uses these letters to describe themselves. There is some merit in taking a moment to explain. So, sensing means you focus on reality, how things really are. Intuition means you see the possibilities, how things could be. Okay, that's not so crazy. Right, of course. No, but again, all of us are all of these things to one degree or another, and more importantly, we're different combinations of these things in different circumstances and in different times in our lives. Ah, okay. Well, you're very rigid in these criticisms, Regalia, you're such a Charlotte. Look, I never watched sex in the city, but I'm assuming Charlotte was not a one or even two-dimensional character,

which is what the Myers-Briggs test tries to break us down into. They describe each letter, so T is thinking, which means the person is reasonable and level-headed. F is feeling, so they are warm and empathetic. J is judging, which means you thrive with detailed instructions and like things solved definitively. P is perceiving, meaning a person is flat. flexible and likes options.

On the surface, it sounds a little bit like a lot of B with a dash of S. You're such a Samantha. I get that all the time. I bet you do, Jordan. So, after you take the 93 question test and you or your employer pays the 4995, they assign you your MBTI score. You can either be an ISTJ and ISFJ and INFJ and INFJ and INFJ and INTP and ISTP and ISFB.

Yeah, so you're just going to go over every possible four-letter combination. Right, an I-N-T-P-E-S-T. Right, now we get it. It's going to be a B-O-R-E if you keep going. So tell me you took this test and you know what you are. No, I didn't take it.

And not just because I don't like wasting my time and money, but because 50% of people who take the test a second time come up with a totally different score or letters or word or whatever the hell it is. The test literally disproves itself. yet about two million people take it every year. And not just on their own. People are instructed to take it by corporate HR departments, colleges, and even government agencies. CPP, the company that

produces and analyzes the test, makes around $20 million a year off of it. Wow. Well, that's 20 million reasons that they continue to push this pseudoscientific test, right? I didn't realize that people get different results when they take it at different times or whatever, but that completely makes sense. this is why when I get ENTJ, I'm like, yeah, but sometimes I, da, da, da, and it seems like it fits me, but then it's also so vague that any of those labels probably could fit me in some way. Right, and it's not just my skeptical and admittedly unqualified opinion that the test is worthless. Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at University of Pennsylvania says, quote, there is just no evidence behind it.

The characteristics measured by the test have almost no predictive power on how happy you'll be in a situation, how you'll perform at your job or how happy you'll be in your marriage. Ah, okay. I think I've heard that about personality tests on the podcast before, but it probably was Adam Grant who said this on the show. He's been on several times, or even Benjamin Hardy, who's a organizational scientist as well and kind of in that same realm.

All right, why do people flock to this test then? We made a little joke earlier about $20 million, but that's the company pushing it. Why does anybody else care? Is it just a palatable slash convenient way, to put people into a box and ditch nuance in favor of simplicity. What's the real appeal here? Well, you'll notice that none of the personality descriptions were negative. But we all have negative aspects to our personality. There's no L for lazy or C for conceited. The results of the

test are flattering and vague. So anybody who gets the results, no matter what their personality, is like, wow, you nailed it. I am empathetic thinking and feeling. This is called the forer or the Barnum effect, a technique used by grifters for stuff like astrology and fortune-telling. Right. Okay, that's funny. The Barnum effect just showed up on one of my logical fallacy flashcards, which I do a few times a week because I'm a giant nerd. This is where people see concrete personal examples and fill in the blanks of something

that's vague when they're given those vague generalities. So they'll fill in specific examples in their mind when somebody gives them something vague. So if I get ENTJ, I might say, oh, yeah, I'm a talk show, so I am extroverted. And I am intuitive, I guess, because sometimes I use my intuition or whatever. And then I just sort of drag evidence kicking and screaming from my life experience to fit the label. And this kind of effect, it makes us think somebody made a great prediction about us or read our future on the crystal ball or tea leaves or whatever when they really just spouted off something fairly general, like a horoscope. And then we latch onto it because we want to be.

believe it, we flesh it out in our heads. It's basically self-deception at its finest. Again, cold readers, mentalists, fake psychic grifters, there's no such thing as real psychic, but psychic grifters take advantage of this all the time. So basically, personality tests sound like, like we said before, horoscope charts dressed all up in a lap coat. Yes, and CPP, the company that publishes the test has three leading psychologists on their board. But get this. None of them use the Myers-Briggs test in their professional life. Okay. Carl Thorson, a Stanford psychologist and CPP board member,

told the Washington Post that he can't use the test because, quote, it would be questioned by my academic colleagues, end quote. Horoscope, meat lab code. Yeah, integrity meet paycheck is more like it. That's such a funny way of saying my colleagues would laugh me out of the room. Yes, it would be questioned by my academic colleagues. Oh, really? What would the question be?

Why are you using essentially the psychological version of a horoscope to do anything in your class, you're supposed to be a respected professor of psychology here at Stanford. That would be the question, but he doesn't want to say that because he's getting $100,000 a year to join a Zoom call every six months. Exactly. Yep. Which is why it's so shocking that this test is so ubiquitous. 89% of Fortune 100 companies use it in hiring, and 200 federal agencies use it,

including the State Department and the CIA, Jordan. The freaking CIA wants to know who's an I-N-T-J-Or. an ISTP. First of all, shouldn't they already know that? I wonder how Jason Bourne would score on something like that. I wonder myself. Personality testing is roughly a $2 billion industry. Obviously, not all personality tests are the Myers-Briggs. Some of them are newer, better research tests, but they are not without problems. There's a growing resistance to these tests and the harm many believe they do, so much so that mathematician Kathy O'Neill has dubbed them weapons of math destruction.

Ooh, that is a catchy, terrifying name and potentially a fantastic book title. She might have a book with that title. That's a really good title, if not. She does have a book by that name. Oh, good. Who would pass up that opportunity? You can't, you can't pass it up.

So you said there are newer, better researched tests. What are they? Are they leagues different than this? And why doesn't the CIA use the new ones? Good question. The other big dog on the personality test block is appropriately called the Big Five, also known as the Five Factor Model. In developing the Big Five, psychologists took a different approach. They listed personality traits and created simple questions

about them. Based on how people answered, they grouped traits into five basic categories, extraversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, and openness to experience. The Big Five doesn't sort anybody into a type, just informs them where they fall on a continuum. already, that sounds better than Myers-Briggs. But again, the Big Five assumes that personality traits remain relatively static over time. So all these tests are riddled with the same problems in that they don't label the person for what they are all the time, but who they are when they take the exam, take the test? Of course, because no test comes with a crystal ball to tell you what personality you'll have next week or next year or any time in the future. But these are not the criticism, Kathy O'Neill and U.S.

others are referring to when they criticize the use of these tests in hiring practices. The big criticism here are the biases baked into the algorithm cake, and the sneaky and nefarious ways companies can use them. Okay, getting juicier. Tell me more about that. Okay, let's start with the biases. O'Neill is a mathematician, data scientists, and author. She points out, algorithms are opinions embedded in code.

The people who program the algorithms contaminate the algorithm with their personal biases, And since the programmers are almost always economically well-off men, algorithm is embedded with their biases. All right, not to be a total Charlotte, but we've got to take a break for our sponsors. We'll be right back. Once again, thank you for listening and supporting the show. Your support of our sponsors does keep us going. All the deals, discount codes are all in one place.

Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. You can also search for the sponsors using the AI chatbot on the website as well. I'm sure it's biased towards middle-aged men, but, you know, whatever. or maybe you can give us some leeway there. Please consider supporting those who support the show. Now for the rest of Skeptical Sunday. This sounds very sci-fi, and I feel like this is part of the AI conversation, too.

It's like some black mirror stuff, right? If the AI is made by a bunch of well-off dudes who are middle-aged, then the AI is going to think like that and not be as useful or as fair to everybody else. Yeah, look, we have to face it. We are living in the sci-fi films we grew up with. Critics say when personality tests are being used for hiring, algorithm filters out marginalized groups and people raised without standard Western values.

So you're saying the algorithms more or less like white dudes? No, this is 2023. No one likes white dudes. Okay, that one hits a little too close to home. But joking aside, this is one of the criticisms, but not white dudes per se, more like people who seem to share traditional, economically stable Western values. Man, that's a big claim, though, just call an algorithm and everything that uses it somewhat biased or racist.

They can back this up, I assume? Short answer, no. But they're not claims, they're warnings. Perhaps companies aren't doing this intentionally, or perhaps it's not what they're looking for that companies are using the algorithm for, but what they're trying to keep out. When personality tests first started being employed in the 60s,

many companies couldn't come right out and ask if you were pro-union, but they were determined to keep unions out of their businesses. So they compiled the traits they thought would indicate if a person was pro-union, some version of, do you believe in justice, or is it worth fighting for? If the applicant answered yes, in the trash, the application went. Oh, that's ice cold. So they were looking for non-rebellious people with no cause to fight for it. Just give me the paycheck, I'll do whatever you want, kind of people.

Kind of. So it's not too far-fetched to wonder what exactly companies might. try to glean from the new or more accurate personality tests. It could, in fact, be used as a way of getting around the Americans with Disabilities Act. Companies aren't allowed to ask if an applicant has a disability, but who knows what hints might be lying in the personality test. Many neurodivergent people like autistic and bipolar people and people with ADD have problems with being labeled too intense.

If employers screen out candidates who test as overly intense, they'll screen out many people with disabilities, which is illegal. Yeah, and it's sneaky. So personality tests can stop a qualified person from getting hired based on, first of all, sort of seemingly arbitrary results, but also results that you're not legally allowed to screen for. Like, yeah, I hope you're not somebody who might need a ramp or wants a union or something like that, because we can't ask you that, but we want to find out if you're old or ugly or need a special accommodation because we don't want you in here. That's really sketchy and gross. Yeah, absolutely. There is a famous example involving a gentleman named Kyle Beam.

Kyle was a straight-A student. He graduated from a good college, and they diagnosed Kyle with bipolar disorder. He knew a friend that worked at a local grocery store who informed him that they were hiring. He applied and took the personality test. Kyle never heard back. For most people, that's the end of it. They never learn why they were passed over. But Kyle was in a unique position.

He knew somebody at the company. Kyle asked his friend why they passed on his application, and his friend informed him that he had been red-lighted because of his personality test, a college-educated man who couldn't even get a job at a grocery store. Tragically, Kyle killed himself. Okay, I didn't see that coming. That is super tragic. I assume there was more to it, right? It's not just he didn't get that job, but he was also, he had bipolar disorder. God, that's really dark, man, and awful. That's way more tragic than a result than I would have thought. Absolutely. Yeah, it is. And it's not just grocery stores.

Dunkin' Donuts, Macy's, McDonald's, the list goes on, all use personality tests to fill minimum wage positions. And personality tests are more high tech than ever. Today, companies are using facial recognition programs to infer what applicants are thinking and hiding during job interviews. And again, the biases of the programmers are baked into the algorithmic cake. I'm blown away by this. I've never heard of the facial recognition during a job interview.

You hear it for security stuff, but that's like some Blade Runner shit right there where they're like, oh, when you asked him why he left his previous job, he had this weird micro expression of this. And so maybe he has negative feelings about how he left, even though he says he left on good terms. I wonder also, I've had like one or two real jobs in my entire life, if you can count some of the stuff I did as a teenager. So maybe I'm not the best sample here.

But I don't remember ever doing a personality test as part of hiring. And I wonder if it's because for a position like an attorney, maybe they look at your degree and your grades and they go, okay, but if it's a minimum wage position, maybe they don't have a degree or grades that they want to look at, and so they have to test on something else, and they just pick this kind of arbitrary BS test to do the job? Does that make sense? That makes sense to me. I mean, it makes no sense, but does the reason check out at all? The reasoning makes sense, and it makes no sense that they would care if the guy that was applying to work at McDonald's was being dishonest about why he left his last job. But look,

this is hardly an optimistic vision of the future. And for what? Quick Google search reveals countless websites offering the answer keys to personality tests. They're classes that teach you how to infer what the questions are really trying to clean and how to provide answers that prospective employers like. So the tests end up revealing very little about a person. It reminds me, there was a guy ages ago, of course, because I'm old AF now. But I knew him. He cheated on his SATs.

I can't remember the hows of it. It doesn't matter because now technology. But he got into a really good school and he had decent grades. but he failed out spectacularly at that school. I bet, and employers are hurting more than helping their bottom line. It's almost as if they should just review resumes, check references, and conduct thorough interviews. I mean, that sounds like a lot of actual work for management, Michael,

that is very 20th century of you to think that anybody would go ahead and do that. Are there changes being made in the right direction with this at all? Kind of. Advocates are warning about the pitfalls of personality tests in hiring, but little is being done. Some psychologists are exploring changes to make-to-workplace personality tests. They are addressing some questions about their validity,

but primarily, companies need to adapt to the changing norms of hybrid work post-pandemic. At Scotty Bank, which has... Scotia Bank. Oh, Scotia Bank. Thank God you knew how that was for us. Yeah, yeah. Nova Scotia. Oh, I thought it was Scotland.

Okay, I'm an idiot. At Scotia Bank, which has 90,000 workers, executives decided in late 2020 to stop looking at resume. They now focus on plum results and claim they have more diverse candidates. Did I hear you say plum results? What is that? Is that something I'm supposed to know or is that another personality test?

PLUM. Yeah. But this one is, in fact, AI-driven assessments to match companies with their perfect employees. That sounds like the algorithm issue we just talked about. So the hiring process is based on the same philosophy. It sounds like as dating apps. And that does not seem like progress. And look, I'm a little bit biased because I know this stuff is crap,

but I can't imagine how much important data that stuff misses in its current form. Yeah, it's not progress at all, Jordan. It's Myers-Briggs by another name and with a shiny technological veneer laid over it. Despite the pushback, employers are looking to AI to fix the flaws of personality tests. Soon, the AI will test AI with AI-driven personality tests for AI, and will all be on the sidelines. In fact, they gave a personality test to chat GPT, and you could guess the result was one of the rarest personality types. It was an INFJ.

That's odd. I mean, introversion? Okay, cool, but intuitive and feeling for chat GPT kind of just shows you what the test is if that's what an AI bot got. And I wonder if the chat GPT Myers-Briggs personality type changes depending on who is giving chat GPT that test. because that would be an interesting experiment. So I get it. Look, AI and technology and all that stuff is new, so there's going to be problems with it.

And I'm not saying, like, throw out the baby with the bathwater, but it just seems like it's all based on a false premise entirely that you can test a personality. And it's not impossible for this to get done right. It's just that what we're doing now, again, is a horoscope and a lab code. I find it absurd that employees have to jump through hoops

to prove we're worthy of employment, but employers aren't actually required to reciprocate. why don't employers have to prove to prospective employees that they won't be horrible bosses? Why does one side of the equation have to prostrate themselves before the potential employer? Both sides are bringing something to the table, the other wants. I say, before I work for you, let me see your personality test. Let me have some assurance I'm not walking into working for a giant a hole. I mean, you know you kind of technically work for me, right?

I didn't mean you, Jordan. Clearly, you're cool. Clearly. Nice save. Very Samantha of you. Thank you all for listening. Topic suggestions for future episodes of Skeptical Sunday to Jordan at Jordanharbinger.com. Pretty much all the topics we do are fan suggestions. So please let me have it. Don't forget the fundraiser at give directly.com slash Jordan. Want to help out our homies over there in rural Kenya. Once again, a reminder that the Stitcher app will no longer work for any podcasts as of all. August 29th, 2023. So if you're using the Stitcher app, time to switch. If you're on Android, podcast addict is a good one, CastBox. And if you're on iOS, I suggest Overcast or Apple Podcasts. The Stitcher app is going away, folks.

Show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com. Transcripts are in the show notes. Advertisers, deals, discounts, and ways to support this show, all at Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram or connect with me on LinkedIn. of course you can find michael regilio at michael regilio on instagram michael regilio comedy dot combe. tour dates up now as well we'll link to all of that in the show notes because nobody can spell

regilio this show is created in association with podcast one my team is jen harbinger jace sanderson robertie e'n baird millio campo and gabriel mizrahi our advice and opinions are our own and i'm a lawyer but i'm not your lawyer do your own research before implementing anything you hear on the show Remember, we rise by lifting others. Share the show with those you love. And if you found this episode useful, please share it with somebody who could use a dose of the skepticism that we doled out today.

In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn, and we'll see you next time. Here's what you can check out next on the Jordan Harbinger show. You're in Somalia trying to track down pirate gangs, and I'd love to kind of hear what this felt like. We went with a big security team. and we paid a security team in a lot of money. And it was this one portion of a clan in Central Somalia

that was supposed to protect us. So how did they get you? My partner, Ashwin, flew off to Mogadishu. I drove him to the airport, and then we saw him off. He got on the plane safely. And then on the way back from the airport, back into town towards our hotel, there was actually a truck waiting for us.

It was a truck with a cannon welded in the back. These are very common trucks. They're called technicals. At first we thought it was there to watch over us. protect us or something. But actually it stopped our car and 12 gunmen from the flatbed came over to my side of the car and they actually fired in the air and then opened the door and tore me out of the car. They were waiting for me and they were probably waiting or hoping for both of us. I think they were a little bit disappointed that there was only one journalist. They beat me.

They broke my glasses and I was wearing glasses at the time and they had another car waiting and they bundled me into it and off we drove into the bush. For about three hours, something like that, Hard to keep track of time, but at some point we stopped. They blindfolded me, and they took me a few steps over to a mattress. So there was a mattress waiting for me in the middle of nowhere. There were other people there, other guards and other hostages, and I sat down for the next two years and eight months. I was a hostage.

For more on life and captivity under the thumb of Somali pirates and how he made it out, check out episode 115 with Michael Scott Moore here on the Jordan Harbinger Show. This episode is sponsored in part by Something You Should Know podcast. Finding a new great podcast shouldn't be this hard, so let me save you some time. If you like the Jordan Harbinger show, you'll probably like Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. It's one of those shows that makes you smarter in a practical, useful way. Same curiosity vibe we go for here, just in a fast-focused format. Mike brings on top experts and asks the exact questions that you'd want to ask,

and the topics are all over the place in the best way. Recently, they've covered things like why we care so much what other people think, the benefits of laughter, why sports fans get so invested, and what makes people like you or not, the through line is always the same. Smart ideas you can actually use in real life. Something you should know has been featured in Apple's shows we love, and it's got thousands of five-star reviews because it's consistently interesting. So if you want another show that scratches that I want to understand how people in the world really work itch, search for something you should know wherever you get your podcasts. Look for the bright yellow light bulb and start listening. You can thank me later.